Following effective and promotion on prognosis screening program for cervical cancers established in many countries, both incidence and death rate of cervical cancer have declined sharply worldwide in recent years. Conventionally, cervical exfolated cells was used to prepare cytological sample with a method known as Papanicolaou smear or Pap test. The Pap test has proven to be highly effective in the early detection of cervical pre-cancerous and cancerous growth. To accommodate huge market need, many sampling devices had been developed. These devices aim to provide better sampling of a full cell presentation with minimum discomfort or traumatic effect. For example; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 3776219 provides a cervical scrapper for self sampling that the collector portion of the scrapper is protected by flexible petal-like appendages from contamination during its withdrawal from the vagina. Similar device used for sampling cervical mucus is described in another U.S. patent application Ser. No. 4628941. Other types of sampling devices can be found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 5253652 and Malaysian patent application no. 141032 which the devices have an embedded portion, to be pivoted through an actuator on the stem as, allocated for collecting exocervical cell samples.
Moreover, the collection techniques for Pap test have been modified lately for detection of human papilomavirus (HPV) in cervical specimen of the patients after having sufficient scientific findings shown statistically significant relation in between HPV infection and cervical cancer occurrence. HPV detection methods particularly discover copies of DNA fragment, in the collected specimen, belongs to the HPV to infer HPV infection. To proceed with HPV detection, the collected cervical specimen requires firstly to be stored in a preserving solution before subjecting to the HPV detection in the laboratory. While transferring the collected specimen to the preserving solution, it is important to ensure no cross-contamination occurred onto the specimen especially unnecessary contact made onto the specimen by other subject matter. Therefore, it is much preferred the sampling device is equipped with a mechanism facilitating specimen transfer with minimal contact with the external environment. Antonius et. al offers a sampling device for collecting cervical cell specimen in U.S. Pat. with publication No. 2006287610. The offered device carries a solution to flush the desired location followed by drawing back the flushed solution to acquire the targeted specimen.